Bernie Loses California but Changes the Game

Far from being a typical presidential candidate, Sanders has successfully transformed his campaign into a platform for challenging how the Democratic Party selects its nominees and does business during a presidential election year. Before Sanders announced his candidacy last spring, only the most inside-the-Beltway, inside-baseball politicos cared about the utility of superdelegates or the fairness of the closed-primary system. Now, thanks to Bernie, American voters—particularly those under the age of 40—are asking serious questions about whether independents should be shut out of the Democratic primary process in dozens of states.

Sanders may have lost the primary, but the political revolution that he has built up and led over the past year has been victorious in raising some of the issues that the Democratic Party would likely have ignored were Jim Webb or Martin O’Malley the runner-up candidate.